ExpatMichael's opinion of anything relating to disco, Italo disco, funk and boogie music. Promotion for my Ebay and Discogs stores which concentrate on the sale of Disco, Funk, Italo Disco, Hi NRG, New Wave, morning music, sleaze and anything pressed on vinyl. There's a link to my Ebay store on the bottom of the page, right under the counter widget. Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave comments. Follow my twitter and join the Disco Vinyl Fan Page on Facebook.

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Thursday, July 27, 2017

Here's another one I'm bringing back. I originally wrote it in 2010. I've refreshed the zip. Enjoy!

Dutch men with Big hair, melancholy lyrics, falsetto's, 80's style, on paper it seems like the makings for schlock. But to me it's morning music sublime. The Time Bandits had several releases which tugged at my heart strings and warmed the cockles of my very soul.

From 1981's "Live it Up" to 1986's "I won't steal away" they rode the U.S. dance charts and European pop charts with varying degrees of success. With their two biggest being 1982's Live it Up making it up to #6 and 1985's I'm only Shooting Love making it all the way up to #2. And was a #1 pop hit in New Zealand.

Australia was one of their biggest markets. Endless Road made it to #5 there in 1984 and became a morning music staple at The Saint and on Fire Island. It remains my very favorite Time Bandits song. I'm not embarrassed to say that the yearning in Alides Hidding's voice has brought me to tears. My friend Paul Goodyear did a tasty edit which you can find in the zip.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Like a lot of coveted Italo Disco, Firefly records can be quite valuable nowadays. To many Americans they could be considered one hit wonders with their Emergency licensed dance hit Love (Is Gonna be on Your Side) which hit #3 on the Billboard Disco Chart. Their only showing on the U.S. dance chart. Incidentally the song is known by another name on their debut l.p. where it is called Love and Friendship. An earlier release Do it Dancin' was a 12" in my Ebay store.

But they actually were quite fruitful, recording several full l.p.'s in the 80's, mostly for Mr. Disc Organization records Italy. Here is their second l.p. My Desire which came out just after Love (Is Gonna be on Your Side). It's one helluva tight production. They coined the term Boogie sometime after the disco era ended making the word disco a bad word. "Boogie" groups like this flourished. They held onto the disco sound while refining it and toning it down. I've also heard this sound referred to as Modern Soul.

I hear more S.O.S. Band and Level 42 here then Charlie, Spacer Woman or 'lectric workers Robot is Systematic so I find it more influenced by soul then Italo Disco, at least not the spacey kind. My favorite cut has to be You Can Lead Me. Get a load of the spicy piano, and those vocals by Crystal Davis who has sung back-up for Candi Staton, Venus Dodson and the incomparable Patrick Adams masterpiece Dazzle. Roland Leonard handled most of the lead vocals on the rest of the l.p. and again on the 3rd Firefly l.p. only to fade away into obscurity after.

"you can lead, lead me by the hand, don't you know your love has brought me high"
"you can lead, lead me by the hand, now's the time to share your love with...."

"I won't discuss your past, life goes on too fast and we just have no time"

The title cut My Desire and Our Trade is Life are also brilliant, and were released as a double A side 12". I'm into the sentiments here, and throughout this album. There's a lot of yearning and sex without ever going grope or filth.

The brainchild of Italian duo Maurizio Sangineto (The Creatures and Passengers) and Maurice Cavalieri (who under an alias was the aforementioned Charlie of "Spacer Woman," fame. Maurice was also Ago and Rainbow Team.
My Desire's music was recorded right where I live, in Rome, Italy at Studio TM while the vocals were recorded at Right Track Studios in New York City and it was mastered by the legendary Herb Powers. A name that is on countless labels of records I treasure.

Spacer Woman is one of my ULTIMATE Italo Disco favorites.A spacer zip
The 3rd album is a lot more Synth Funk, Gino Soccio/Lime influenced. The first track Kiss Power is much better then the rest but like the first two it's a solid production.

A1 Kiss Power (5:10)
A2 Love Is Coming (5:15)
A3 With You (5:05)
A4 Give It To Me (5:00)
B1 Don't Be A Fool (5:12)
B2 I Just Want To Be Your Lover (5:11)
B3 Keep On (4:45)
B4 I Do Love You (4:47)

In 1992 a best of CD was released which leans heavily towards the material on My Desire. It has 8 tracks and then 5 more mixed together.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Model, painter, disco diva, TV personality and the absolute fiercest of the pioneering transsexuals (along with Candy Darling), Amanda Lear was born Alain Maurice Louis René Tap in Saigon, 1939. Or it could have been Paris. Or Hong Kong. The year might have been 1941, 1945 or as she now claims 1950. There is much competing information about her parents, none of it conclusive. In general, not much is known for sure about the early life of Amanda Lear and she would very much like to keep it that way. She claims to have been educated in Switzerland and she eventually made her way to Paris in 1959, taking the stage name “Peki d’Oslo,” performing as a stripper at the notorious drag bar, Le Carrousel.

Amanda Lear’s mid-60s model card.

The story goes that the gangly, yet exotic Eurasian beauty Peki had a nose job and sex change in Casablanca paid for by none other than the Surrealist master Salvador Dali, who frequented Le Carrousel, in 1963. Amanda, as she is now known, then makes her way to London to become a part of the swinging Chelsea set where she is rumored to have had a relationship with Rolling Stone Brian Jones. She models for Yves St. Laurent and Paco Rabanne and is a constant muse for the Divine Dali, but her career is held back by rumors that she was born a man or was a hermaphrodite.

‘For Your Pleasure’ cover

Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry saw Lear on the runway during an Ossie Clark fashion show and invited her to be the model for Roxy’s For Your Pleasure album cover, walking a black panther on a leash. They were briefly engaged and that image has become iconic. Lear also had a yearlong affair with David Bowie who serenaded her with “Sorrow” in his “1980 Floor Show” (broadcast on The Midnight Special in 1974). Bowie helped Lear launch her musical career and by the late 1970s she had become a bestselling disco singer and television personality in Europe with hits like “Follow Me,” “Queen of Chinatown” and “I Am a Photograph.”

The David Bailey photograph of Lear that appeared in the infamous 1971 Dali-edited issue of French Vogue

Amanda Lear’s autobiography, My Life With Dali came out in 1985 and it begins when she would have been approximately 24 or 25 years of age. Almost no mention whatsoever is made of her life before arriving in London in 1965. When Dali biographer Ian Gibson confronted her on camera about the gender of her birth in his The Fame and Shame of Salvador Dali TV documentary, Lear angrily—and not at all convincingly—stonewalled him. She has always vehemently denied that she was a transsexual despite it being a well-established fact. She even posed nude for Playboy and several other men’s magazines and often sunbathed naked on beaches to dispel the rumors. All this really proved was that she had a kickin’ bod, but if you ask me, I think it’s sad that she choses to keep up this pretense. She should be rightfully celebrated for her biggest accomplishment in life—ironically, being true to herself—but apparently Amanda Lear just doesn’t see it that way.

Amanda Lear vehemently denies having had a sex change on German television 1977.

Today Amanda Lear still looks amazing—she’s practically ageless no matter what her real biological… age might be—and continues to perform all over Europe. She’s sold somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen million albums and 25 million singles. She also has a thriving career as a painter and an original painting of hers can sell for $10,000 or more. She’s done stage acting and was the voice of Edna ‘E’ Mode in the Italian-dubbed version of The Incredibles. Lear was a judge on the Italian version of Dancing with the Stars.

“The Stud” from 1979’s ‘Sweet Revenge’ album

FROM OUR PARTNERS AT VICE

Modeling in the 60s with Patti Boyd Harrison and Karianne Muller (later a Roxy Music cover girl herself) in ‘Der Kommissar’:

Her big hit “Follow Me” on German TV’s ‘Musikladen’:

Another performance of “Follow Me,” this time on Dutch TV’s ‘TopPop’ program:

“I am a Photograph” live in 1982:

“I am a Photograph” music video:

“Queen of Chinatown”:

“Alphabet”:

“Blood and Honey”:

Amanda Lear in her first TV commercial appearance, circa 1967, for Révillon’s Detchema fragrance. The music is by cult figure French soundtrack composer, François de Roubaix:

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Other then Italo disco, morning music and sleaze have been a big feature on Disco Vinyl. It's a type of sound that I don't want to ever forget. Oh the memories of a morning music sets under the dome!

The Skatt Brothers were a Los Angeles band that had been working with Kiss and like them were also signed to Casablanca. Walk the Night is their only track that made some waves in fact it went all the way up to the #9 on the Billboard dance chart in 1980.

It's a special record and always gets a good response. It was even featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto 4. According to Rockstar Games, the company thought the song so important to have on the soundtrack that they hired a private investigator to locate Delaney's (who died in 2003) surviving relatives and secure the rights to include it. wikipedia

For one of my most interesting posts go up to the search function and look for sleaze or morning music. There is a great run-down on the genre. Unfortunately the links are pretty much all dead but a pretty pretty please and I may even go look for some of them again.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

I once read an interesting list that purported to be all the songs Larry Levan played at The Paradise Garage. It was on a website called Jahsonic.com. But now I've come across one that is far more comprehensive.